Author: J.G. Hovey

My heart was so far up my throat, I was all but strangling on it. My sweat-slicked clothing was strangling my body with its grip. Ahead I could see a clearing. God, let it be a man made one…

When I stumbled on the grass, and saw that cabin just sitting there, I sobbed in relief. I managed to crawl the remainder of the way to the door, somehow. My legs felt like their strings had been cut. But I managed to haul myself up on the door handle and get it open. I slammed the door behind me and leaned on it, gasping and wheezing.

But I wasn’t expecting what I saw in that beat up, dingy cabin. I’d expecting something more like a hunter’s shack— maybe skulls and deadly looking tools handing everywhere. A rotting and neglected mattress, maybe. Some dusty animal mounts. That sort of thing.

Instead, it was full of modern art pieces. Some very abstract, some more down to earth. Faces, koi flags, that sort of thing.

There was no dust.

There was even an electric lamp, on, in the corner.

Sure, there were some rough wooden pieces, but not the kind made by some rough country guy or gal. The kind made by someone who probably sold pieces at city art festivals. Or like a fake butter churn you’d get to stick in the corner to make your cabin look rustic.

My heart, which I didn’t think could beat any faster, felt like it was about to explode.

Someone once told me that reality is just what we observe. That we determine what is real. And when I say somebody, I don’t really mean someONE, right? I mean those friends that maybe smoke a little much, or are a little too New Agey, or maybe this or that guru’s documentary or some such.

And if they aren’t talking about that in a general way, or maybe they get the vibe you’re not into the spiritual stuff, maybe they start to talk about quantum this or that, about human observation, and about infinite universes based on different choices we make.

I’ve always found this kind of talk far too anthropocentric for my taste, not that I care for it at all.

But I suppose you never know.

Maybe, just maybe, we are just a flock of crows pretending to be human and we’ll just change our minds and fly away someday.

The rain was torrential, unrelenting. My hands were slick on the steering wheel as I leaned forward, chin over my knuckles. I appeared to be alone except for the car and the rain and the darkness outside. But I knew I wasn’t.

I didn’t glance into the back seat. Do not glance into the back seat.There was nothing but me, the car, the dark, and the rain. There was the road, too. Void. Not even deer were out, though I was certain the moment I let my guard down one would flash across my vision. I squinted, trying to see past the watershed. My eyes flicking left and right for the signs of anything moving in the brush I couldn’t really see.

After an eternity, I pulled into the gravel driveway. The rain had stopped by then, but fresh enough that the drips were still loud, falling from the huge Victorian house in front of me. Dawn was still hours away. Electric lighting reached out from the windows, hungrily, illuminating the ill-kept yard and gardens just enough to determine that they were in truly sorry shape.I didn’t glance back at the car as I shuffled up the steps to the front door. I already had what I needed. My fingers slid into the front pocket of my jeans and deftly inserted the key they found into the front lock.

“Did you do it?” she asked, taking my coat.

“Yes.”

“Did anyone see you?”

I didn’t answer for a moment. Then, “He’s in the back seat.”

“… I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks. I’m sorry.”

“You always are.”

I sighed. “Where will she be today?”

“You’ll find her in the woods out back.”

I didn’t go out immediately. Nor did I find my room and sleep. I paced a bit, rummaged through the bookshelves and liqueurs and finally settled on a splash of something that might have been whiskey and flopped down on the soft chair near the stairs. It would only be a couple of hours until dawn. I listened to the lingering drips outside as I sipped my drink and remembering how I’d first found this place so many years ago. In my dreams.

I jolted awake, but as usual, no one was there. The table was empty except for the green mood lamp in the center. Sunlight, weak, was trickling in through the gaps in the heavy curtains.

There was no sound except the soft thumps of my boots on the hardwood floor, even that barely audible. When I opened the front door I was not greeted by the sounds of birds or insects, just the impotent faded glow of a morning that seemed to have died before evening being truly born. The gravel path was empty, and I turned away from it, instead heading around the side of the house and into the woods behind it.

She was small today, I almost stepped on her in the brush. She was the chair of a doll today, broken and forgotten. She held up a mirror, and in the reflection I saw nothing but and endless river of her.

Mama always said that a closed door was another one opening somewhere, that every exit is an entrance. The last time she’d said that was when they were dragging their belongings to the car. Before that, was when she’d come home early that one time. I could see her teeth like crushed eggshells framed in a smile so brittle that even the faintest breath could’ve blown it away. She wasn’t wearing makeup that last time.

I kept waiting for those doors, all those years. I don’t know where Mama saw those doors. After so many times, I wasn’t sure how she kept going and how she could keep saying that same thing over and over again. But then again, I didn’t seem to have any trouble seeing the doors after they were closed. There was always another closed door. Doors that could have been Success, Financial Security, Happiness turned us away towards Failure, Poverty, and Despair.

Probably, she was still saying it when I was grown and gone. What doors did she see, then?

I’m standing at her grave now, and in my mind’s eye I can see her standing there surrounded by doors. But not the kind of doors that just closed again. Wide, open doors.

Tim pursed his lips, edging them up and down the filter of his cigarette. “Do the stars seem brighter to you guys somehow?” He asked.

“I dunno, because alls I can pay attention to his how you’re sucking that damn thing like a tit.” Joey spat.

There was silence after that. Before, Mike and Sharon might’ve said something. Maybe someone would’ve called someone a homo and someone else would’ve rolled their eyes or there’d have been the sound of a smack and a short hollar of pain. But those days were fading now.

“Do you think we’ll meet again? On the other side?” Sharon said. That’s all Sharon really said, these days. Mike was staring into the black woods, and said nothing. Mike was beyond words altogether, Tim figured.

“God, shut up Sharon…” Joey breathed. He reached over and snatched the cigarette from Tim’s lips and threw it to the ground.

“You shithead, I’ve only got a couple left! Ow!” Tim yelled as Joey smacked him across the side of the head.

“You shut up too! You’ve ‘had a couple’ for weeks now.”“…I know.”

There was more silence again. Sharon, having said her peace was staring at the horizon. Mike, still looking to the woods. Or maybe, looking at the twisted metal thing resting there.

“I’m sorry. You know, about the car.” Joey muttered. He was closer now, leaning into Tim.

“…I know.”

Together they watched the stars until the sun rose, bleaching them from the sky. And shortly after, they, too, faded into the light.

The water was cool, pleasant. She closed her eyes as it soaked into her, drawing out the heat of the day’s emotions. The water was still and pure, like glass. Charlotte wondered for a moment why she hadn’t spent more time in the lake before. But it was more of a whimsy when she asked herself. She knew the answer. Just laziness, really. The hassle of undressing, then when finished the drying and the redressing and this and that.She’d spent a lot of time thinking about all the times she’d wanted to slip underneath the surface, just like she was doing now. Her emotions became as calm and her thoughts crystallized. She’d stared out of the window of the estate so many times. Longing, so many times. But always there was an excuse not to indulge.

She felt something stir in the water, then. Opening her eyes, she peered through the muck and the startled minnows to see a flash of pale skin. Felt, more than heard, the murmur of the voices on the surface splashing and playing. The vibration agitated along fine tendrils and set her heart skipping. She felt the pain of old memories weighing down on her. Even so, she was drawn forward, pulling herself along the lake bed by her fingers and toes, the cloud of mud disguising her approach.

Felt the eyes of those mocking girls from long ago, felt the scorn, the pity, the hate, and the disgust. Felt the lake when it had filled her, choked her, and embraced her.

Her fingers dug into the soft silt below. There was a flash, as a white leg, unknowing, swept by her face. She surged forward, snapping down on the soft flesh. The vibrations became screams, the mud became red as she pulled her jaws downward and reached up to sink her claws into the hated vibrations.

Mother was gone, the boy knew. The trees had taken her. But he was hungry, and no matter how he yelled or how far he walked, no one came. The phone never worked. She’d run with him when the roots had entered the house. Days before the family had locked themselves inside, watching the television scream about the trees, the trees and roots everywhere. The trees were taking people, eating them.

So they sat inside, and shivered and cried. They’d started to run out of food when Father disappeared. Mother had screamed and cursed his name, then. Screamed about him leaving them.

And now she was gone, too.

The boy was empty inside as he walked in the moonlight. Numb.

Autumn had come while they hid. The trees had lost their leaves, leaving grasping clawing fingers stretching in all directions. But they were still. Trees died in the cold, the boy thought. They slept. Right?

He walked among them, his heart as cold and empty as the branches. He was near town. Father had taken the car.

By this point, the sky was beginning to lighten.

Suddenly, he saw a silhouette move… one… two… more…human silhouettes against the dawn, moving through the woods.

She was covered in blood again when she woke. She could tell before she even opened her eyes. The crackle. The cold, wet clothing against her skin.She didn’t wonder whose blood it was anymore.

Didn’t cry or scream or wonder if she was a werewolf or a vampire, or completely mental.

Those emotions had run their course years ago.

She didn’t wonder about when the police would come banging on her door. They never did.

Didn’t ask why no one else seemed to notice it, not anymore.

Because they did notice it, she saw them notice it, before their eyes slid away. Before they talked to her less. Before the awkward silences, the unreturned calls.

Before the landlord stopped asking for the rent.

She didn’t wonder why no one returned her calls to look at properties.

She didn’t ask why there always seemed to be at least one man with a suit standing beneath the window. There were usually two. There would be three today, she guessed. Maybe four.

Years ago, sometimes she would wake and hear voices arguing and yelling outside. The light of cars coming and going down the gravel driveway.But that was before.

Her eyes wouldn’t open. That would have panicked her… before. Now she just rubbed the crust sealing her eyes shut. It had been a busy night, it seemed.

She didn’t need to wash the blood from her skin to know it would be whole, unblemished. To know that it wasn’t her blood.

But she would shower anyway. She would put on fresh clothes. She would go out, enjoy some time in the woods, and get some eggs, milk…

She didn’t stop at the library anymore, even though they never charged her for the stained books. Never asked about them.

The house would be clean when she got back. The men in suits never spoke of it.

The Eye of God stared at her, painted in blood above the basin, between the two open windows. After all these years, she could smell the fresh scent of clean clothes and the scent of the woods carried in on the breeze over the scent of the blood. She didn’t wonder about God anymore.

Like generally, you accept that your car will start, and that most likely your morning will be uneventful— or rather, eventful in the normal way. Traffic, maybe a near collision. Something like that. Something that happens as it usually does with little variation.

Until the car doesn’t start that one day.

But you get it fixed, and soon you just continue assuming it will always start like it should.

You assume you will wake up, and your spouse will wake up, and your child will wake up. Maybe you’ll have breakfast together. Maybe not, depends on how your family runs, right?

Or maybe you don’t have a family. So you don’t expect that some day you would just wake up and… poof… there’s a kid asking you to make breakfast and someone hogging up the bathroom.

Because that wouldn’t make any sense, would it?

But sometimes things happen. Like the car stalling.

Or pregnancy.

Or maybe… maybe one day your body doesn’t work the way it should. And it’s terrible and it sucks, but you take for granted that it’ll get better.

Except it doesn’t. That happens, too.

And sometimes, it isn’t your body that isn’t working the way it should— sometimes it’s your mind.

And sometimes, that get’s better too. Or it doesn’t.

You think about those things, and you shudder in horror. You shudder because you think you take for granted that you’ll live through it. That you’ll experience it… well, maybe not forever, but you really do kind of think of it as forever, don’t you?

You take for granted that you’ll die some day, but you never really think about when. Well, at least, you avoid thinking about it whenever you can.At least, you think, you will die in a generic way, probably. Maybe you prefer a certain way, but you don’t think about it being sudden or quick, generally.

You put on your shoes every morning and take for granted that you will always keep putting shoes on. Or slippers. Or whatever it is you do each day.You don’t think about disappearing. Probably, you take for granted that you’ll go to Heaven. Or live another life. Or something. Maybe something like sleep.

But she remembered when the last of them had left. When he had gone from being quick, and fast, and full of energy to when he began to slow and dull and fade… and when he was finally still. And later, when he was bloated and rank. But she still held him within her. She kept him safe. But she could do nothing when the strangers came. When they had finally carried him away in a bag. When others came and took away the bits and pieces of himself that he’d collected within her over the years.

His smell had lingered for a bit, until a ball hurtled through one of her windows. And when another broke, later. But she still imagined she could still smell the traces of him. Traces in the carpet and tattered couch.

Someone had driven nails into her, covering the holes in her wounded flesh with wood and plastic.

She was barely aware anymore. Didn’t think any more of the rot creeping in her bones. Of the kids and druggies and vermin that crept inside her although she did her best to keep them out.

The last had left a fire in her, candles lit on the chandelier while they partied and laughed. Then they had left her. Alone, with the fire. The fire which reached up, touching and exploring her heart.